Tuesday, May 29, 2007

First Amendment Follies

The president of the University of Colorado has recommended that a professor who likened some September 11 victims to a Nazi should be fired, according to the professor and the school.

Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, has denied the allegations and threatened a lawsuit if he is dismissed.

......Churchill touched off a firestorm with an essay likening some victims in the World Trade Center to Adolf Eichmann, who helped carry out the Holocaust.

University officials concluded he could not be fired for his comments because they were protected by the First Amendment, but they launched an investigation into allegations that he fabricated or falsified his research and plagiarized.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the First Amendment. No one has a First Amendment Right to a job. If you say or do something offensive in the course of your employment your employer has every right to tell you to get lost. Mr. Churchill has every right to say whatever asinine thing that might happen to flutter between his ears, but he does not have the right to a State funded platform to speak from. It's not censorship to tell you I want my megaphone back.